Derek Gores’s Latest Collage Works Find the “Beauty in Chaos”

Melbourne, Florida based artist Derek Gores relates creating collage art to a dreamy, abstract search, digging through representational images to find beauty. Previously featured here on our blog, Gores has said that his primary motivation as an artist is to combine elements and make something new, a fundamental principle of collage. His colorful collages borrow clippings from recycled magazines, maps, and labels, reassembled into bright images of figures that pull both contemporary and vintage design styles. Some of his works are over 6-foot largescale pieces, to smaller, 4 to 8-inch pieces, first created from a photo and then drawn from his head, a process that he describes as “an opposite way to work”. Though his collage art has a foundation in reality, or real photographic images of fashionable people, buildings, and objects, his imagery also has a place in fantasy, where they fill in the gaps of his imagination. For his upcoming exhibition, “Beauty in Chaos” at the Epicurean hotel in Tampa, FL, Gores will debut a series of more tonal collages that depict fashionable women on the catwalk, or overlooking surreal cityscapes, and other subjects like butterflies that recall Andy Warhol’s electric commercial illustrations of butterflies. They are visually chaotic in their arrangements, but reference a blend of modern and classic beauty made from torn and geometric cut pieces of paper. Some call these works angular or cubist- Gores calls them “un-designed.” “Most of my pictures are of beauty, but beauty built of chaos and mess and dischord. I like the end result to be positive, and I always depict a strong and individual presence,” he says.